by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

Just ask Brad Pitt. He has spent weeks running on it, circling the globe, crashing movie theaters and introducing audiences to his mega-zombie thriller World War Z, in theaters today.

After years of being "drawn to the smaller, more intimate films," like Tree of Life and Killing Them Softly, Pitt has done an about-face with World War Z. "It's a monster of a film," he says, made for two young zombie fans: his oldest boys with Angelina Jolie, Maddox, 11 and Pax, 9.

The popcorn flick hits theaters six months after its original release date, thanks to reshoots and a newly scripted ending. But if you were expecting Pitt to hedge about the sweat equity involved in finally releasing this morphing 3-D blockbuster, you've got the wrong man.

"Listen, I'm pretty proud of this film," he says on a warm Los Angeles afternoon in May, dressed in black and hair tied back, those famous blue eyes twinkling. "I've really enjoyed especially this last six months, getting back in there and fixing it."

More on that later. In War Z, Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator confronted by a raging worldwide pandemic of rabid zombies. This is apocalypse by extinction, and Lane is forced to leave his wife (the Globe and Emmy-nominated Mireille Enos) and two daughters to combat a threat multiplying by the hour.

Even among zombies, Gerry Lane might be the most relatable character Pitt has played in years: a father as tough as Bourne but fairly fallible, steadfast as Bond, yet hardly as skilled. "He's someone who has special skills and has been in war zones, and crisis was his background. But at the same time he's this everyman," says director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace).

"Gerry Lane," Pitt chuckles. "One of the worst names in film ever. It was appropriate. I don't know why it's appropriate. Gerry with a 'G'. He's the anti-action hero. It's an anti-action hero name."

Candid, self-effacing and passionate: Pitt vacillates between all three describing War Z's mutation from concept to screen. Pitt's deployment into the zombie canon began in 2006, when his production company Plan B optioned the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (son of Mel). The novel is told in the past tense, through first-person vignettes, but the film veers sharply, putting the onus on Pitt in present day.

Pitt was fascinated with its SARS-like themes and the pandemic's geopolitical consequences. He and Forster worked to perfect how their zombies would look and lurch, creating unconscious monsters that attack rapidly, teeth first.

"We're dealing with a genre that's been pretty well mined and done really well," says Pitt, whose zombies borrow from the movements of Malaysian bees, docile until triggered into a swarm. "We're not the gore of The Walking Dead. Ours operates more of as a thriller. Ours is really intense."

As a producer, Forster calls Pitt "inspiring to work with. And he has such good taste, he's so giftedâ?¦.I felt like our sensibilities were going in a similar direction."

LOTS OF WOES TO MAKE 'WAR'

But big films invite glaring spotlights. In the June issue of Vanity Fair, Pitt's face is splashed across the cover under the headline "Brad's Big Bet," coupled with a damning story on his blockbuster's woes: the spiraling production costs (World War Z cost $190 million to make, according to Paramount), a completely reshot 40-minute last act, and questions about Pitt and Forster's working relationship. The story quotes a variety of sources, including Forster, Paramount executives and the film's screenwriters, but not Pitt. In this USA TODAY interview, Pitt's only long-form newspaper interview, he sets his story straight.

War Z is "the biggest film I've done, period," he says, easing back in his chair, leg crossed over a knee, sipping a latte. "It's pretty damn good, isn't it?" He grins. "No one knows what they're talking about."

Nor does he blink when asked to describe the day he screened the film's self-defeating first cut.

Instead, he chuckles. "It was just atrocious," Pitt says with the spark of a man retelling a saga in which he prevails as victor. "You see some first cuts and you go, 'Oh, it's everything you want it to be and more.' It's working on certain levels that you didn't even understand when you were shooting it. Like, I had this feeling seeing Moneyball. And here was the exact opposite."

Pitt ticks off the problems: the rhythm was off and scenes weren't working as intended, but they had the footage to correct that. What was most worrisome was the crescendo the movie built to, a bloody zombie battle in Russia which veered too far from the source material's intelligent focus. "Our summation of the thing was just a complete failure," he says. "You develop this sense I guess as you get on in your years, and we all knew. We just didn't know how much it would smell. And it was pretty rank."

There's that grin again.

"So this is what happens: you go, ugh. And you're debilitated for the rest of the day, (and) the next day. And then after that you go: 'OK, we've got to get back in there. We've got to tear this thing apart and we've got to make this thing work.' "

To launch his fix, Pitt invited Lost creator Damon Lindelof to watch a cut of the film. "I was really excited about everything that I saw," says Lindelof, who signed on to script a new ending with Drew Goddard. Together, they removed Pitt's character from the battleground and flew him into a different part of the world where a more intellectualized, chilling finish awaited.

Pitt's longtime producing partner Dede Gardner calls his work ethic tremendous. "He's the first person to say 'Let's keep going.' And that's hard, you know? Everyone has lives and families and multiple responsibilities. It's easy to get to 'OK' and he's not satisfied with 'OK.' Which is I think a remarkable quality." (As for industry rumors that he and Forster stopped talking, "That's just not true," Pitt says simply.)

During reshoots, the cast regained balance. "I think a lot of the stress in the original shoot came from not being 100% confident that the end of the film was right," says Enos. "Once they knew that they had that right and they'd written it and we were doing it, the energy was really fun."

What resulted is a heart-racing, CGI-enhanced zombie thriller critics are cautiously embracing, awarding War Z a 63% positive score on Metacritic.com. "We did it right," Pitt says. "That's what we owe the audience."

HIS NEXT ENEMY: SUPERMAN

The battle moves now to the box office. War Z opens just one week after Man of Steel launched to the tune of $128 million, and box office analysts say that behind new kid flick Monsters University, the race between Man of Steel and War Z will be closer than people expect.

At the theater, "there's a lot of momentum right now," says Paul Dergarabedian, chief box-office analyst for Hollywood.com, who predicts Superman and Pitt will see weekend takes in the $50 million range. "Man of Steel is still a major threat, but I think there's plenty of room for both films to do well in the marketplace." Analysts are also betting on positive word of mouth for War Z, a strategy that greatly benefited The Great Gatsby in May. "I don't think folks were prepared for it to be quite as good as it turned out to be," says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.

There's a lot at stake here for both Pitt and Plan B. If War Z works, it's a turnkey franchise-starter for the actor, with much content left to mine from Brooks' novel. "It would be nice for Brad Pitt to have a franchise like Johnny Depp with Pirates of the Caribbean or Robert Downey Jr. with Iron Man," Dergarabedian says. "He's one of the best working actors today."

By publicity standards, Pitt is going toe-to-toe with Superman. He co-designed Paramount's massive rollout, which included premieres in London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, South Korea and New York, yodeling alongside Jimmy Fallon, plus a 24-hour blitz popping into screenings in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and Austin. "I think it's a stamina somewhat unprecedented," Gardner says. "But his thinking behind it was very much one of wanting to reach the fans."

By his side has been a radiant Angelina Jolie, now recovered from her double mastectomy and reconstruction, the news of which broke at midnight before this interview. Today Pitt is a man basking in the "wonderful relief to come through this and not have a specter hanging over our heads. To know that that's not going to be something that's going to affect us."

To keep Jolie's privacy this spring, Pitt closed ranks while continuing to work. Even Gardner, president of Plan B, says she "was stunned" the day Jolie's news dropped. "And incredibly moved. And of course quickly flipped through my memories and recollections of the past six months and thought to myself, 'Oh my God, how did you do this?' But being impressed by him is not a surprising feeling to me."

Big as it is, War Z struck a chord with Pitt, who cites family safety as his chief concern. And in the end, this is a family affair: Maddox, who created a zombie-baby movie with his friends in the backyard, is "actually a zombie in this film. You can't really see him but he's in there." And the girls? "They don't really care," he says with a smile.

As for whether the film is too violent for kids, Pitt leaves that up to you. "For some kids it definitely is (too violent)," he says. "It's PG-13. And my kids aren't even 13, my boys. But I know my boys and, again, it's parental guidance. Some will pooh-pooh me as a father, but I think my kids are coming out all right."

Later this year Jolie is due to begin directing Unbroken (based on Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling book) and Pitt is set to release the buzzy historical drama Twelve Years a Slave (out this fall), which he produced and in which he has a cameo. "It's an incredibly important story," Pitt says, of a free African-American man kidnapped and sold into slavery in the mid-1800s.

But for now, life for the family of eight is back to normal at Base Camp: Los Angeles. "I don't know if it's normal but it's ours," he says. "And we just stick together."